Friday, January 02, 2009

This blog sucks

I was reading crib chronicles with mouth agape, as usual. Bon can really, really write, eh? The post was as charming as many found there but annoying no end in its closing inquiry. "What do you do when the words don't come?"

Well. You know... I write anyway.

I would estimate that the words stopped coming about a year and half ago. What did I say, twice the children, half the blog?? p-man has been good to the change but me, well obviously, not. I publish, and perish, weekly. I can crank out some'how mommy blogger can I get??' post just to burn a few pixels that I, what?, feel I'm entitled to at my advanced age of bloggery.

I don't know how to stop.

But on the other hand. Who cares? It's just an eency-weency blog. I need to keep my launch pad to the blogroll of worth-whiles. I need to keep only a very tiny persona alive enough to give meaning to the real work to be done, commenting. Just a bit of texture when the comment is labeled, mo-wo.

And, on the third hand it's the nature of the thing maybe? The mother-woman in it all? Look at my kids, they're big. We are milestone-less. The good times are gone, when to wean? the wonderment of the aquarium, the charms of mocking my own blogging have all passed me by. Poignancy is OVER. And, while the dimming might fell greater blogs than this I persist.

Many times I've thought, what if my mother knew I had this blog? Would she be proud? Inside, all the while, I know what... she'd laugh. Well not to my face, but behind my back. She would look at all the typing and fury and scoff. It's my mom. That's where I come from, no? "What makes her think it's worth talking about??", my mom would think, I think. Parenting? You just do it. Make it up as best you can. Put yourself out there. Let the buck stop with you and, then, let it stop there. Too abstract.

For now I keep thinking of Gore Vidal. Did you see him on US Election night? The BBC used him as a pundit. At closing the panel just laughed their asses off. What was up with Gore Vidal?? Who booked him? Did he know what he was talking about, at all? Was it the dementia? I want to be Gore Vidal. I want to still show up, in a really fantastic cravat and everything. Show up and not care if I suck. I know it's Barack's night.

When I was having my words I didn't know bon. The wonder that is the cheesefairy eluded me. Relatively it was bleak. I had no Mad Hatter and we spent too much time thinking about the sweetjuniper people. Now is a good time; no matter how badly I write, nor how often. I know I have my moments, and I still get those random comments from complete fly-by's that I know might make it worth it, some 'you tell it like it is' endearments. But, they don't make the persistence of unexpurgated drek at this url worth it. The only thing that makes it worth it is the trip to all of you to see good work now. You know who you are.

6 Comments:

I am hitting walls every time I turn. I also write anyway and sometimes I read my archives and think about how much I hated a particular post at the time but how much better it seems through the lens of nostalgia. In this way I retain faith in my ability to please/amuse myself several years in the future. Only partly joking...this has always been my goal with journals.

1. Your blog doesn't suck.2. You wrote one of the best posts I have ever read. 3. Even if 1 and 2 weren't true (and they are), I like you. I think we mesh, connect, you know? If we can't be friends at 7,000 km distance (or whatever the hell it is), we can have this. And that, my dear, is good.

I never thought your blog sucked -- but who the hell am I. What matters is what the blogger her/himself thinks.

I do know how you feel. My brother, and a few real-life friends, actually told me, "Your blog was funny the first year, but then it got really boring." You know what, though? I don't care -- it's not for them. It's for ME, and a small group of readers (a few real-life friends, and a circle of friends I've met through blogging).

When I was jobless, my blog figured largely in my life, and I actively courted readers. Now that I am a fulltime working drone again, I am happy just to blurt out a few words now and then.

Sorry that my comment was all about me, me, ME, but that's my point: your blog should be about you, you, YOU -- and your "you-ness" is a work in progress.

I understand where you are coming from. As I watch visitation dwindle to the 4 people I know in the flesh, I sometimes wonder what I am doing. But didn't I start writing with no audience but myself (and ever loyal Chris)? So I keep going too.